The giants of the Viennese school, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, produced over one hundred and thirty piano sonatas between them. Among the “minor prophets” Hummel wrote nine, Dussek over thirty and Clementi (according to Grove) about sixty. Clementi's pupil, Field, although he wrote seven concertos for the instrument, was more niggardly with sonatas; there are perhaps four of them, three being his Opus 1. The prolific era was followed by a great drop in numbers; from Schumann, Chopin and Brahms we have three each and from Liszt one. Subsequently Grieg, Tchaikovsky and Balakirev contributed one each, Glazounov two, Szymanowski three, Ravel a sonatina. Benjamin Dale's one monumental effort seems to deserve a separate sentence. Some great masters of piano writing, Debussy for example, refrained entirely. Three Russian composers have alone made any attempt to “stop the rot”, Scriabin with ten, Medtner fourteen, and Prokofiev eight. No other noted living composers have got anywhere near Medtner and Prokofiev in regard to numbers; Bax has given us four sonatas, Ireland two (if we count the sonatina, but Prokofiev has two of those), Pizzetti and Bloch one each, and there is even an early one by Sibelius. These figures make no attempt to be exhaustive.

Some months ago, during a conversation on Musical Form, the remark was made to me that the Rondo had been rather scantily treated in theoretical works; and that the portion of that great book on musical composition by Marx, which deals with this form, had never been translated into English. My friend went on to say, “Why should you not write a paper on the Rondo (taking Marx as your basis), and offer it to the Musical Association?” Acting on this suggestion I proceeded to write the paper, which with much diffidence I now offer you; and if it should give rise to a discussion in which further light may be thrown on the subject, I shall feel that it has not been written in vain.

One hundred years ago, on the twenty-seventh of March, died Ludwig van Beethoven, a composer whom universal opinion has placed among the greatest men of all time. It is not my purpose to give a sketch of his life, but, as far as it lies within my power, to reconstruct his position in 1827; to explain his position in 1927; and to forecast his probable position in 2027.

Most of us have experienced, in one form or another, the feelings of that Frenchman who read the writings of Seneca a few years before the French revolution and found them to be fantastic and absurd. But reading them again when France was under the terror, and his own head was no more safe than it would have been in the days of Nero, he found them to be reasonable and true.

Bedecke deinen Himmel, Zeus,
Mit Wolkendunst,
Und übe, dem Knaben gleich,
Der Disteln köpft
An Eichen dich und Bergeshöhn;
Musst mir meine Erde
Doch lassen stehen,
Und meine Hütte, die du nicht gebaut,
Und meinen Herd,
Um dessen Glut
Du mien beneidest.

Ich kenne nichts Ärmeres
Unter der Sonn', als euch, Götter!
Ihr nähret kümmerlich
Von Opfersteuem
Und Gebetshauch
Eure MajestÄt,
Und darbtet, wÄren
Nicht Kinder und Bettler
Hoffnungsvolle Toren.

In the British Museum (G. 40) are three part-books (bound together), containing six sonatas or suites, entitled: Suonate da camera a tre, doi Violini, Violoncello, e Cembalo, da Arcangelo Corelli da Fusignano, detto il Bolognese. Opera Quarta. Prima Parte. Nuovamente Ristampata. In Anversa, da Henrico Aertssens, Stampatore di Musica, all'Insegna del Monte Parnasso, 1692 Con Privilegio. The Cembalo part, with the figured Bass, is missing.

The subject with which I have to deal this evening is a very complicated one, and the time at my disposal is very short, so that I can, at the best, give you but a brief outline of it. I will, therefore, not lose a minute upon any preliminary remarks, but proceed at once with my paper.

‘'TIS Vexatious to have such music neglected.’ Mrs. Pendarves was writing to her sister, Ann Granville. That same evening she was to attend a revival of Handel's Sosarme at the Hay-market Theatre, and she feared another empty house. She was right.

Since that day in 1734, many musicians and musical historians have echoed Mrs. Pen's vexation over the neglect of Handel's operas. Most of them have agreed with her about the excellence of the music; but few have said that its neglect was undeserved. For all his great gifts, we read, the master was working under impossible conditions.

As every musician knows, John Field invented the Nocturne, and by doing so earned for himself his small but secure niche in music's Pantheon. The word Nocturne was not entirely new to music. Haydn, Mozart, and many lesser composers had used its Italian or German equivalents for vocal and instrumental works intended for performance at night. But the notturni and Nachtmusiken of the eighteenth century have little in common with the wordless love-songs which Field called Nocturnes. His invention was something more important than an evocative title; it was the crystallization of an idiom, and through this idiom a new aspect of the romantic movement could be channelled into the mainstream of music.

This is by no means the first occasion of the introduction of the alto voice as a subject for a paper and discussion. In the eighth Session of the Proceedings of the Musical Association there appears an interesting and animated discussion of the use of this voice after a reading by Dr. W. H. Monk on church music. The late Dr. A. H. D. Prendergast wrote on Man's Alto in English Music for the International Musical Society in August, 1900. This paper is an attempt to show the use of the alto and counter-tenor voice from early times up to the present day.

Most musicians are aware that the Victorian attitude to Handel included an element of travesty. They are less aware, with comparatively few exceptions, of the sizeable beam in the eye of to-day. The oratorios, which contain Handel's finest work, have suffered most of all, owing to the peculiar convolutions of the British evangelical conscience. A nation that for half a century regarded the story of Saint-Saëns’ Samson and Delilah as too sacred for stage performance is capable of any kind of artistic imbecility; and Handel's oratorios are still suffering from this sort of approach.

It may seem strange to commemorate the centenary of Satie's birth by a discussion of his output from 1891 to 1895 rather than by an overall appreciation. But his accepted standing as a minor yet historically important composer has had a twofold result: on the one hand, little basic documentary research into his output has been undertaken; on the other, general appreciations of him have been written many times, largely by authors whose main concern is Debussy, Ravel, Les Six or recent French music as a whole. As you would expect, this literature tends to be accurate in outline but unreliable in detail. Therefore I have thought it best, rather than repeat the easily available broad facts of Satie's life and work, to concentrate on some topic which can be more thoroughly covered in the time. The Rose Croix music stands out as being conveniently self-contained, unusual, interesting and misunderstood.

When we listen to a piece of music, whether it be a fugue by Bach, a song by Schubert, or a symphony by Beethoven, the actual physical, objective, stimuli which reach our ears consist of incredibly complicated pulsations of air pressure. These produce equally complicated vibrations of the tympanum or ear-drum, and so set up successions of nervous impulses in the brain. But our subjective experience of the music, the thing that we actually hear, consists of a logical and meaningful sequence of harmoniously interrelated auditory impressions, possessing form and unity both as a whole and in detail. How then does this series of discrete air vibrations, which are produced by the musical instruments or voices of the performers, become transformed and organised into the mental thing that we call music? In other words, what is the psychological nature of our perception or cognition of music?

The Gemshorn can be defined as a folk recorder, made from an animal horn, which enjoyed some currency from the latter part of the fourteenth century to the middle of the sixteenth. It belongs to that definitively European class of instruments, the end-blown fipple pipes; but it is unique amongst them in having a bore which is a stopped inverted cone. Apart from endearing itself to organists for some four and a half centuries as a useful flute-stop in which its name survives, the Gemshorn made few appearances, whether folk or formal, after its final decline round about 1550.

St. Cecily, a Roman virgin, beautiful, of noble and wealthy birth, ‘believing the Gospel, carried it alwaies about her, reading often thereon’. But her father betrothed her to Valerian, a young aristocrat who was not a Christian. He, ‘being inflamed with the love of Cecily, desired much the wedding day’. But Cecily ‘fasted, wept, and prayed continually’, desiring God to preserve her virginity, ‘for that this marriage was not by her desired … since she had given herself wholly to Jesus Christ’. Nevertheless the wedding took place and only afterwards, when she was alone with Valerian in the bridal chamber, was she able to tell him of ‘a waighty matter … I have an Angel of God in my company, who is jealous of me, and guardeth my body very diligently. If he see thee so hardy, as to come near, or touch me, with carnal or lascivious love, he will chastise thee rigorously; but if he see, that thou love me with pure and chast love, he will love thee, as he lovest me.’ Valerian, we are told, ‘hearing these words, was somewhat troubled’.

In his study of Turner's great picture of the sea, The Snowstorm, Sir Kenneth Clark draws attention to Turner's preoccupation with ‘visions’ and ‘dreams’. These words, he says, ‘were commonly applied to Turner's pictures in his own day, and in the vague, metaphysical sense of the nineteenth century they have lost their value for us. But with our new knowledge of dreams as the expression of deep intuitions and buried memories, we can look at Turner's work again and recognise that to an extent unique in art his pictures have the quality of a dream. The crazy perspectives, the double focuses, the melting of one form into another and the general feeling of instability, all these are forms of perception which most of us know only when we are asleep. Turner experienced them when he was awake’.

There are some people who maintain that all translation of vocal music into other languages is barbarous, and that no opera ought ever to be performed except in the language to which it was written. This position is a perfectly logical one, and I can sympathise very cordially with it in theory; I would certainly say that for the detailed study and criticism of any opera a knowledge of it in the original language is indispensable. But for practical purposes translation is a necessity, if opera is to receive any popular encouragement. In France, Germany and Italy, as well as in other countries such as Holland, Sweden, Poland and Hungary, where the native language is not one that is commonly learned by foreigners, opera is regularly performed in the language of the people; it is therefore only commonsense that opera in England should be performed in English, at any rate in those theatres where opera is performed regularly throughout the season. I shall therefore assume that I need waste no more words this afternoon in defending the principle of opera in English. I must however, make it quite clear to you that my paper deals solely with the translation of operas, and that it will not treat at all of the translations of any other kind of vocal music. It is necessary for me to mention this, because the conditions of opera require methods of translation which would often be quite inappropriate, or even utterly inadmissible, in such forms as oratorios and single songs. In these branches of music I have little experience as regards translation, and I do not intend to discuss them at all.

The date of the foundation of the first German Bach Society, 11 December, 1850, marks, by common consent, the birth of modern musical research. It preceded by less than a year the issue of the first volume of the first complete edition of Bach's works. This event had been foreshadowed by the editorial efforts of two generations of Bach scholars, and it had originated in England. It was there, not in Bach's native country, that A. F. C. Kollmann, K. F. Horn and Samuel Wesley planned and issued critical editions of certain keyboard works of Bach at the turn of the eighteenth century. Only thirty years later the Bach revival became an international cause with Felix Mendelssohn's memorable performance of the St. Matthew Passion in Berlin on 11 March, 1829.

Since the Royal Musical Association was founded in 1874, it has heard five papers on Mozart. Perhaps the most notable was read in 1932 by C. B. Oldman, under the title ‘Mozart and Modern Research’. As this gave me the idea for the present paper, and as Oldman's name will recur in it, I might briefly recall what he did for the Association and for Mozart. He was a member of Council for 37 years, and a vice-president for 21. Shortly before he died, in 1969, he gave up the chairmanship of the Proceedings Committee which he had held since 1953. From the mid-1920s, for nearly three decades, it was he in the British Museum, even during the arduous years of his Principal Keepership of Printed Books, to whom visiting musical scholars came for advice, particularly on Mozart, but on much else as well.